letting go

by haywardhelen

All those years of being needed, of coming when I’m called, are coming to an end. My kids still need me; but even more they need me to let go, and for their not to feel bad about leaving me dangling. They’re leaving the door open; prompting me with emails, beckoning by texts. They just don’t want me in their field of vision. They love me not less, but differently.

For years my mother warned me of the roadblock that lay ahead. ‘Before you know it’, she’d say, ‘they’ll be off and away’. But I never believed her. How could I? For twenty years my kids were in the middle of everything, of the everything that was my life. For twenty years it felt natural to drop everything when the school nurse called, when my kids wanted driving lessons, or when an open-ended conversation in the hall needed more time.

I’ve always admired women who seemed more single-minded in their career than I’ve managed to be. However none of us chooses our emotional makeup and I made peace with mine long ago. Whatever I gave up, whatever sacrifices I made along the way, were as much for my sake – stress hater that I am – as for my kids. Besides whatever I gave up was more than made up for by intimacy with them. Yet this is the treasure that I feel I must let go if they’re to find their feet and go their own way. Just as my mother waved me off at the airport, thirty years ago, not knowing when she’d see me next, now it’s my turn. Like a bird flying out of opening hands into the waiting sky.

These days it’s my job not to know too much, to hug the shadows and to cheer from the sidelines. It’s my job not to start sentences with, ‘Why don’t you…?’ Instead it’s my job to shrink the richness and intensity of childhood into easy commonplaces like, ‘You’ll be fine’. Or, ‘Everything that you need to be you, you’ve got already’. Or, as if they’ve ever doubted it, ‘I’ll always be here for you’.

In an email sent from the airport in Buenos Aires, my son tells me that a photo I just put up on facebook, of him waving down from high up a wooden mast, wasn’t taken in Antarctica earlier this month, as I’d supposed, but in Greenland last July. He laughs at my mistake. And yet despite all that distance – Drakes Passage and four-hour shifts and weeks out of contact at sea – I don’t feel out of touch with my son. Though for much of the time I have no idea of his geographical whereabouts, I still know who he is; for all his travels I still feel able to reach him. I feel hugely grateful for this. It helps a lot in making up for his not being around day to day. I’ve already told him that from now on he belongs to the world, not his family; and I meant it.

Ten days ago, surprising us both, my daughter put up her hand to leave home. At that moment I heard the other shoe drop. She too, it turns out, needs space to find out who she is and what life can be, without me in the picture. She too, like her brother, is leaving home earlier than I did, pushed into it by circumstance. She laughs when I tell her that her hummus-eating mother could ever have sprinkled a packet of Twisties into a roll and called it lunch when she started university; but I did. She finds it exciting that, in a month’s time, when she buys an icecream and calls it lunch, I won’t be there to scold.

‘You won’t know yourself’, my mother would say over the phone, the night before a long school holiday ended. She was right. The shift from ‘What shall we do today?’ to ‘What shall I do today?’ was huge. Even after a long weekend, moving from ‘we’ to ‘I’ felt like a blessed a relief. It still is. Only this time, when my daughter goes to university in a month’s time, the question won’t have such an easy answer. At least at the beginning, she’ll be back for weekends, so it’s not total abandonment. But it’s still a lot of windy time to fill, meals to cook, walks with our reactive dog. Already I can feel the ‘what shall I do?’ question staring me down, like a too bright sun.

My husband is having dancing lessons. He says he’s wanted them for ages. Perhaps I should join him. But my heart doesn’t leap at the prospect. Besides, in order to keep my sanity, in the flurry of family life, I stopped following my husband’s lead a few years ago. Rather than living closely in conflict, we chose to live side by side in harmony. And I prefer it this way.

It was always my plan, from the time I fell pregnant, to devote myself to family knowing that there’d be plenty of time left, once my kids had left home, to do my own thing. However all those years ago, when I made this calculation, I left out an essential bit. I left out all the ways in which having children would change me, making it impossible to slip back into the old way of being me. Nor do I know what doing my own thing is anymore. My friends smile and say that this is all part of the journey, of letting go, of becoming free. Let’s hope they’re right.

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12 Comments to “letting go”

Oh golly Helen, I was nodding along. I am almost there too, 3 of my 4 are gone this year. I only have 1 left and she is fiercely independent.
I dont really know who I am anymore, for so long I’ve been mum, and while I will always be mum this stage is so very different. I have no control, it’s not a shared journey anymore, it’s their journey, one which I can watch and feel all the emotions but not one I can direct. I know that this is how it should be but I never knew this is how I would feel. I do however feel for my parents now, as I left and made my way in the world without a single thought for how they would be feeling.
I must find me, find what my life will be in this new stage that I’m only partly ready for. The future stretches ahead long, lonely and empty if I don’t find what it is that I enjoy. I am questioning the choices I made now, would I have given up so completely my other life to throw myself into parenting, probably. I have never regretted this choice I made, I think the tricky bit is now because the choice to enter this new stage of life hasn’t been mine.
I have so many feelings about this, thank you for writing this piece and reminding me that I’m not alone in my feelings, oh so many feelings, at this time of change. Actually I wonder if this is how it feels to be made redundant? One day so important to the situation and seemingly the next, not needed.
Cheers Kate.

Oh what a wonderful piece of writing. My daughter left last year to live in Canada and though I have two sons still living at home my life is one of independence now. I think of my hectic life back 15 years ago and honestly I do not want it back. I love my children but I’m enjoying my own time. And if I’m at all truthful I’m relishing the freedom I have before my partner retires and my life will become one busy merry-go -round. Yes there’s a sadness I admit to that ever changing phenomenon of growing children. Ah but let’s celebrate independence. Cheers.

oh gosh! This is all to come. I feel it changing this year already as my eldest will embark on secondary school. Whilst my life is currently entwined with theirs and I often crave more freedom, I am also aware how fast it has already gone and how quickly the rest will go. Beautifully written as always and ideas to think about.

This is incredible. I don’t have children and I’m not sure I want them yet, but I have been experiencing the empty nest thing from your children’s perspectives. This post is really eye opening, beautifully written, and hauntingly casual. I love it. 🙂 Good luck.